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There was a lot of discussion in here recently about restaurants and hotels who were manipulating the rankings by encouraging clients to post positive reviews here in TA. There was also a mention (can't find it now) of TA's refusal to do anything about unwarranted and false reviews that were damaging businesses.

As you will be aware TA does nothing to confirm that reviews (good or bad) are genuine. It would now seem that they are going to be forced to act. A group of hotels and restaurants are employing a reputation management company to take up this issue on their behalf..

Thanks for the link Alex. This has been going on for a few months now, and just about every paper in the land has featured a minimum of one article on the subject which has also been covered on BBC's Watchdog and Jeremy Vines Radio 2 programme.

I've given feedback to some of the above and my edited comments have appeared in one of the broadsheets. Those comments were anonymous, as that's the way I like to keep things, but there's irony in that anonymity given the subject matter. A certain company is threatening to litigate against and expose those who have penned fraudulent reviews. Fair enough, some are slipping through the net, but they also want to expose the identity of all reviewers. A recent spate of threatening PMs to TA members in relation to their honest but critical reviews, confirms that reliquishing anonymity of members is a terrible idea, and thankfully TA are resisting it strongly.

Personally, I take the view you cant trust tripadvisor reviews are far as I can throw them, the forum is of benefit, but I would use it for information, not for rating. The system is far too open to abuse, ideas yes, rating no.

No-one wants to see defamatory or malicious reviews, or false negative/false positive reviews. It would appear that many of these are penned by people within the industry and I would be only too pleased to see this stopped, as they are spoiling things for the rest of us by playing their silly games here.

I cannot see how the legal action could work in its present form, though if it helps find a solution to the problem of fakery, then it will have done us a service. Meanwhile I will continue to use the reviews for research, discounting the one-post-wonder reviews, or the overly gushing or overly scathing reviews, falling back on the forums for back-up confirmation. I don't stay anywhere without checking with Tripadvisor first. You just gotta know how to use it;-)

This is very interesting, as my wife and I suffered a very malicious review on trip advisor about the self catering cottage we had just spent a small fortune renovating to a four star standard a couple of years ago. We were excited about our new venture and went to every length to do things legaly and to the very highest standard we could afford in order to make our guests welcome and comfortable at a fair and honest price.

The review was posted by a guest who took umbrage when we refused to allow him to bring extra members of his family to stay (6 in total) at very short notice, yet he failed to mention that in his post. The property was advertised as sleeping a maximum of 4 and he had already completed and signed our booking / T&Cs forms.

At that time we had no experience of review sites and it was a very kind gentleman from America who spotted that this particular review was intended to cause damage to our business and reputation and he took it upon himself to email us with the details. It had been posted for over a week and when we eventualy read it we were mortified. We contacted trip advisor with a totaly honest account of what had gone on with the poster. We stressed our fear that our new business would be affected by these lies and fabrications and urged trip advisor to remove the post or we would spend every last penny on a solcitor to take up our case. After a few email exchanges basicaly stating that trip advisor was not responsible for the content of the reviews posted on their site etc etc they did remove the offending post. But I can assure the readers here that we felt at the time that this was only done with reluctance and in a very cold and matter of fact way.

We believe that everyone is entitled to freedom of speech in a democratic society, but surely there also has to be a mechanism in place to prevent the abuse of this right. That mechanism ought to be provided by the owners of the media sources that publish reviews and ultimately proffit from them, good or bad. Without proper investigation how can it possibly be believed?

A few years ago I falsified a review for my business because someone wrote a review for it which was totally unjustified and extremely upsetting. Having spent many thousands of pounds converting my Victorian detached house into a dwelling suitable for B&B and then spending even more money on all that that was necessary to furnish the place, I too was full of enthusiasm for my new venture. I worked hard and for the first year, enjoyed myself.

Then I was forced to say "no" to someone for something and a malicious review followed, although I had no knowledge of TA for several months and was unaware of what had been said. When I found out, I cried myself to sleep.

I complained to TA who said the review followed their guidelines and refused to remove it. I lacked confidence and did not post an owners reply and so, resorted to faking a review to counteract it. I know I received bookings as a result of the "one post wonder" which I put up and in time, also received several favourable genuine reviews which brought more enquiries. My business has now closed, my website is down and my entry on TA long gone for which I am profoundly thankful.

I never asked to be a part of TA and had I known such a site existed when I opened my B&B, would not have wished to join it. As it was, my hand was forced and I used the site for my own advantage.

Interesting thread. I find it hard to condone falsifying reviews, whatever the circumstances. It is such a shame that Trip Advisor does not maintain mire open channels of communication with hoteliers/B&B owners, to enable malicious/incorrect reviews to be easily removed - thus precluding Sownack's predicament.

Last year I planned a toad trip round the SW USA, and I used TA extensively to book cheap roadside accommodation. After perusing 100s of reviews, you can quickly tell which reviews to disregard (diatribes, stupid complaints, unavoidable issues etc). But not everyone uses TA as much as I do, and it is a real shame that good honest businesses can lose out on businesses beciase people are taken in by poor quality reviewing.

There are a number of threads popping up at the moment calling into question the integrity of TA. One can only hope that some time soon they will deign to respond.

1. People who post malicious reviews - I have great sympathy for the two cases described above.

2. TA's 'popularity' listings' which don't differentiate between places with one or two reviews and places with dozens!

Not sure what the solution to no 1 might be, but maybe TA needs a more sophisticated formula for its 'popularity' tables, which takes account of the number of reviews a place has received, as well as their 'positiveness'?

Regarding soliciting reviews, it really is quite simple. If I run a business and only 50% of my clients are happy with what I have provided I can ask them to write a review and forget about the rest. Some of them will place reviews and my rating will rise giving a false impression of the standard I offer.

The vast majority of the 50% who are unhappy will not write reviews so my rating will be unfairly skewed to the positive. That cannot ever be fair and it produces misleading ratings.

Just had a call from a boutique hotelier friend who also believes his reputation was damaged by malicious posts on trip advisor and just about every other review site out there! The reason? His night manager tried to stop two male guests from rampaging drunk around the small city hotel in the early hours. After trying various attempts to subdue the drunken guests and after complaints from other guests the manager had no alternative but to suggest that the police may have to be called if they didn't stop drinking (their own booze) and calm down. The next morning the abuse continued at breakfast with threats to the staff that they would all be out of work soon. They duly posted defamatory remarks around review sites including trip advisor about the terrible treatment they had received from the staff at this hotel and they even used their own names. It seems that the owners of establishments just have to accept this type of thing.

Bad enough the false or damaging reviews but even more frustrating being powerless over them. Could the lack of honest scrutiny be tempting otherwise honest owners to post reviews as an antidote to this common poison?